Rory Miller has 17 years of experience working in maximum security detentions, booking, and mental health facilities; for 14 months he was an adviser to the Iraqi Corrections System, working in Baghdad; he is the author of several books Meditations on Violence; we talk about self-defense, the false assumptions martial artists make about violence, breaking the “freeze” response, fear of death, fear of embarrassment, how a criminal thinks, Steven Pinker, the decline of violence in the world, the power of violence, human nature, and much more.

Full Audio of Interview on YouTube

Rory Miller Quotes (from Podcast)

“One of the problems with martial arts, especially if you want that martial art to make you feel safe for self defense, is that people want answers. People want to feel comfortable having answers. But there is nothing out there that’s an answer to all the bad things that could happen.”

“It’s not uncommon to spend 5, 10, 20 years for a martial artist to study what to do when a bad guy attacks him, and yet spend absolutely no time studying how bad guys actually attack in reality. I only see that in martial arts. There is no way you would ever go to a medical doctor and he would say that he has never bothered to study diseases or injury, he just focused on studying surgical techniques and drugs.”

“No one remembers their training until after the first 3-5 encounters.”

“If someone (who is not dealing with violence as part of their job) had to use serious self-defense skills five or more times, they need to make better lifestyle choices.”

“There are four ways that things get into your head: teaching, training, condition, and play.”

“A lot of times what we are training and what we are conditioning are working against each other, and it’s the conditioning that comes out in a fight first.”

“People who play hard have a huge edge over people who don’t play hard but pretend that they do.”

“Death is an inevitability. The world has a 100% mortality rate. No one gets out alive. A lot of the self and ego that people get defensive over is a wisp of smoke anyway.”

“In infinite universe, everybody is wrong, just accept that. If you can just start there, it gives you a lot of freedom to learn and to make things better, because then you’re not trying to making things right, you’re just trying to make them better.”

“Most of the mistakes that people make in a fight aren’t because they are afraid of dying, but because they’re afraid of looking stupid, they’re afraid of being embarrassed.”

“Everything involved in self-defense is breaking a social taboo. We don’t usually yell at strangers. We definitely don’t hit strangers. Even guys who practice martial arts all the time. We’re hitting friends, people we know, not strangers.”

“I believe everyone is a natural fighter, but we’ve been conditioned not to be.”

“Part of being good is exerting will when nature wants you to be bad, when nature wants you to eat the weak, to say: not today, I don’t need to do that, I’m not going to.”

Andre Terencio is an IBJJF referee, 3rd degree black belt in BJJ with more than 20 years of training, competing, coaching, and refereeing; we talk about the value of competition, how new rules are enacted, what makes a good competitor, what makes a good referee, the goal of a good rule set, advantages, leg reaping rule, new rule forbidding sumi gaeshi as counter against head-outside single leg, Eduardo Telles turtle guard, Keenan Cornelius DQ at Worlds, submission-only tournaments, and more.

Full Audio of Interview on YouTube

Quotes

Andre on the value of competition:

“I believe that every jiu jitsu practitioner should at least once in his life or her life step on the competition mat. It’s a great experience. It’s not just about the goal of winning a medal, but to prove to yourself that you are able to step on the mat and beat your own fears.”

Andre on the relationship between referee and competitor:

“As a referee, people might not like you but they still respect you, because in the back of their head they know that it’s a tough job.”

Ryan Hall is a BJJ black belt, head instructor of 50/50 BJJ, an ADCC bronze medalist with a long career in high level competition throughout which he has beaten many of the top grapplers in the world; we talked about moral victory, maintaining a stoic expression, a unified theory of grappling, the value of competition, a lifelong pursuit of a singular goal, best martial art for self defense, cultivating ego, and much more.

Excerpt: Value of Competition

Excerpt: Moral Victory

Excerpt: Best Martial Art for Self Defense

Excerpt: Principles of Jiu Jitsu

Full Audio of Interview on YouTube

Quotes

Ryan referencing Frank Herbert’s Dune in discussing the value of pursuing a singular goal for a long time:

“If you search for freedom, you become a slave to your own desires, ironically. But if you search for discipline, you find liberty, in the long-run.”

Ryan on the courage of giving 100%:

“It takes courage and heart to properly prepare (for competition), because you’re risking horrible dissapointment. I’ve prepared so hard, tried so hard before and I won. And other times, I’ve prepared so hard, tried so hard and I lost. It hurts. It really hurts. It doesn’t hurt nearly as much if you half ass it, because you didn’t put that much into it. But that’s a cowardly approach. The right way is to prepare properly, you train hard, and then win, lose, or draw you deal with the results.”

Ryan discussing that most people are not honest with themselves about how hard they work:

“Most people would rather look like the thing, than be the thing.”

Ryan on what is involved in working hard:

“Trying hard doesn’t just mean having to be carried off the mat. It means thinking, reassessing, reevaluating, asking ‘how can I be better?’ It takes honest self analysis.”

Ryan on the cost of excellence:

“You show me someone who is well adjusted, and I will show you someone who is probably not a high achiever.”

Ryan on removing extraneous details:

“A principle-based approach to grappling is incredibly important. What I try to do is block out the extraneous nonsense. Talking about 55 details and reasons for something that’s going on is only clouding your thought process.”

Ryan on moral victory versus actual victory:

“If Fedor slaps your mother, you have to hit him. You have to. And he’s going to kick the shit out of you, almost certainly. But you have to hit him. Trying your best and losing would be the honorable thing to do.”

Ryan on the importance of ego (grounded in reality) in progress:

“Most progress over the course of human history has been made by unreasonable people that said: ‘fuck you, I’m going to win.'”

Quotes

Tim Carpenter showing a bit of skepticism about the overly simplistic theory of the Big Bang:

“The problem with science is that it’s done by people. There’s no way around that. So it’s all got a little bias in there.”

Tim Carpenter on sport jiu jitsu:

“I like berimbolo. I like doing that stuff when I’m training. The problem is: those moves don’t work on an unskilled opponent. You try to do the berimbolo on a white belt, it probably won’t work. It only works on guys that will give you a high level reaction. You can practice berimbolo all you want, but what are you going to do when a guy just punches you in the face. Next thing you know you have a guy in your half guard, and he is biting your cheek.”

Brad on submission-only tournaments:

“A lot of people are afraid to get submitted. I don’t know how else to explain why all these submission-only tournaments are so small. Because that’s the most prestigious thing to me. If you submit everyone in your weight division, that’s the ultimate.”

Brad on self-defense and street jiu jitsu:

“The problem is there are people starting jiu jitsu with their foundation being berimbolo. The foundation has to be in self defense.”

Brad on cornering Tim’s first fight:

“He said that one of the first things he thought when he was in there is: ‘Why am I doing this?'”

Tim on a part of him wanting to enforce the requirement of fighting for receiving a black belt:

“If I’m ever going to give a black belt out, the person has to go out and get into a fight.”

Tim on giving good book recommendations to Brad:

“All the great things in Brad’s life have come from me.”

Brad on a way to approach competition that removes some of the pressure of winning:

“I try to remind my students and myself is that getting better is more important than winning, especially when you’re at white belt, blue belt, purple belt, brown belt.”

Brad on being realistic, but doing everything with conviction:

“Do everything you do with conviction. If you’re going to shoot a double leg, shoot a double leg, blast through them. Don’t think ‘watch out for the guillotine. That’s different than being over-confident. To me ‘over-confident’ is a guy who didn’t train properly.”